Scenario; You are a 49 year old male with no previous adverse medical history. You leave work in your car at 1746 on a Tuesday evening sometime in May 2020. Due to the virus the roads are quiet and you anticipate a short drive home through the country whilst listening to Radio 2. This is before a badger skitters out in front of your vehicle along a quiet lane, causing you to take evasive action, leave the road, and hit a tree at 50 miles per hour. Seven minutes later a farmer driving a tractor in a nearby field see's the smoke from your vehicle. On arrival he finds the air bags depolyed, the front end pulvervised by an oak tree that has stood since the reign of Queen Victoria. You have been unconscious for several minutes. An ambulance is deployed, but the system is under so much pressure it doesn't arrive for another 28 minutes. Your heart stopped 57 seconds prior to its arrival. Miracle workers that they are, they get your body restarted as the Fire brigade remove the roof from your vehicle. A roads policing unit is also in attendance, but they are down on numbers due to the ongoing infection rate. 1 hour and twenty minutes after you strike the tree the ambulance arrives at a seething A&E department, and you encounter further delays due to the lack of critical care staff, again due to the way in which the Coronavirus has bought the nations infrastructure to its knees. Whilst awaiting triage your heart stops again, and this time there is nobody to bring you back. Your life ends in a crowded corridor, with no family members in attendance.
Wind the clock back to an evening in mid March. The Prime Minister has just ordained that all pubs, restaurants, and similar venues be closed to reduce the number of large gatherings. This will come into effect at midnight. Not one to miss an opportunity, and mindful that this might be the last chance to party for the forseeable you take to the streets. The pubs themselves aren't crammed but there's still people aplenty, but by sheer luck you do not come into contact with a carrier of the pathogen. You end the night with a visit to a Kebab van in the square, which is when your good fortune expires. 4 minutes prior to your arrival a carrier of the virus, completely asymptomatic, leans on the counter palms down whilst she places her order. It is a smooth flat plastic surface. You replicate this behaviour and voila, you are suddenly the unknowing inhabitant of a whole new world. The Kebab tastes wonderful, and it is little wonder that the virus finds an easy pathway into your body. You, like the last customer develop no symptoms, but you are a carrier, and over the coming days you play your part in spreading the disease to countless others. Most suffer mild symptoms, but the contagion rate is immense, and as a consequence a process of mass infection swings into gear which, over the next two months, imposes the kind of pressure on an already failing health system that it could never hope to manage.
So now we return your lifeless body. Nobody noticed until a Porter glanced to their left as they pushed a trolley down the corridor. The body is moved on as quickly as resources allow. Next of kin are informed, but of course never get to see you. You will go down as a footnote in history, another unwitting victim of the disease of our age. Not because it killed you. But because it destroyed the fragile infrastructure we took for granted.
Let's just return to the critical moment here. It was the moment you chose the hit the streets back in March. A decision to ignore the advice, to do as you saw fit. Had you stayed in and watched Netflix or, heck even Porn Hub, perhaps the chain of events would not have unfolded as it did. The ambulance may have arrived sooner, the A&E may have had more resources and been under less pressure. If's, what's, maybe's. In fact the only element you really had over the whole sequence was that initial decision.
Ladies and Gentleman. Boys and girls. Stay home, be safe, wash your hands. In closing, have you ever heard of the phrase Altruistic Self Interest? It's when you do the right thing in the knowledge that by doing so you also benefit. This is the message of our times. It's a good kind of selfishness. It will save lives. And it may just end up saving yours. . .
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